Thanks for asking for help… Let me know if you guys need help.

About a week ago, I was in a meeting where my team addressed the fact that we often get left in the dark when it comes to general project information. For example, we could spend any given evening working until 4 am on a presentation due the next day, only to come into work at 7 and find out the deadline has been moved or even canceled for some ungodly reason.

Despite the fact that the one weird guy on the team with no life never really seemed to mind situations like the one described above, my team decided to take action. My team lead takes the time to sit down and craft a well-written email to our “Big Boss,” you know, the big guy/girl who runs the show, seems really friendly but asks you what your name is almost every time he sees you? Says things like “Well hey look who’s flying the company flag today!” when he sees you wearing anything with the company’s logo on it? Anyway..here’s what our specific and clear email said…

“Dear Big Boss,

Could you forward us a more detailed version of the presentation? We’re a bit out of the loop on general project info, so anything you can provide will give us a better sense for how to proceed with our work.”

Big Boss responds, about an hour later with the following (verbatim:)

All
You guys have to do is ask me, and we will get you whatever info you need

…sigh. Dude, Big Boss, come on man (in NFL commentator Chris Carter’s voice*)! Typically, I expect fragmented/hastily written emails like these to come from a phone. However, given that it had Big Boss’s signature on it at the bottom , I’m relatively certain he was sitting in front of his computer when he wrote this… from his keyboard. Getting past that… I thought “asking you” is what we just did? Now I’m sitting here scratching my head, trying to figure out how to re-ask without making it sound like… “My man… READ THE EMAIL”

I’m fully convinced that bosses rarely do anything more than scan emails that come in from their subordinates. On the rare occasion that they actually read them, they usually wait long enough to respond so that the subordinate figures out his or her own way to solve whatever problem they were emailing about. I bet if I were a partner, I might have responded with something a bit more complete/thought-out… and I definitely would have slid the word ‘All’ down a line so that it could join up with the rest of the sentence.